a review of 克莉丝汀魅力

HOOPTOBER OCHO NIGHT FOUR I'd kind of overlooked this one for a long time because the premise didn't sound all that promising to me, but Carpenter gets pretty much every drop of thematic juice out of it and then some. The central performance by Keith Gordon is a real high-wire act in terms of taking this nerdy kid (who contrary to the '80s movie formula, is never quite entirely sympathetic) and turning him into an outright psychopath by the middle of the movie. It took me half the movie to recognize Gordon as the same actor who played Rodney Dangerfield's son in "Back to School," which I thought was another surprisingly strong performance that didn't feel anything like this. The visuals of the car driving around on fire and self-repairing itself are pretty astounding as well, and even though I know basically how they might have been done, I don't really want to know more than that. It's the sort of thing that would be easily faked with CGI or other unreal trickery, but seeing it done more or less practically is extremely effective and still looks great almost 40 years later.